CrunchGear

A nice yes would have been just fine…. steve is such a prick

This is a GREAT response. Now this moron will not waste the time of any more of the Apple support team’s time and they can help their non-moronic customers.

Note to moron: find an Apple repair shop in your area and take it to them. They’ll probably charge you less to tell you you’re an idiot.

I think you guys are missing the point. It’s not whether or not he will have to pay for the repairs, it’s the assessment costing $300.00 that is irritating him.

If a mechanic says to you “sure, I’ll do an assessment on your car, but the assessment will cost you $1000.00 whether I can do the repairs or not” then he’s a crook — a legitimate business person will do the assessment for free then let you know how much it’s going to be.

I”m sorry, no matter how “intricate” you may think the macbook pro is, it’s not that hard to determine what it will take to fix it — it’s not like they are testing every circuit on the mobo individually — if there is a problem with the mobo (which their tools will tell them in all of about 5 minutes), then they’ll replace the whole thing (not solder individual capacitors by hand!).

-olly

You people crack me up. If this was anyone but Apple, you’d be tripping over each other rushing to criticize the company for ripping off its customer for the $300 “we’ll think about fixing it” fee and the screw you email. But since it’s King Jobs and the Holy Court of Cupertino, we instead string up the moron customer by his thumbs for blasphemy. If every MacBook Pro were to explode 10 minutes from now, each taking out the user and a couple of bystanders, we’d see a bunch of comments saying the users were stupid for allowing themselves to be blown up.

Silly rabbits. Let me see…. let’s look at what it will take for the laptop to even be looked at:

1) A customer service talks with him over the phone (10mins)
2) An RMA is generated(2mins)
3) The customer’s laptop is received by shipping with other shipments (30mins)
4) The customer’s laptop is routed to the appropriate department, on-top of other various apple systems, ipod, and the what-not. These all of course having been paid for by customers who know something is broken. (20mins)
5) Laptop is disassembled to verify hardware status (1hr)
6) Basic functionality is tested (30mins)
7) The unit is reassembled (10-20mins)
8)The technician creates a report on their findings which gets routed to a manager (10-20mins)
9) Status is reported back to the customer (10mins)
10) Unit is routed back to shipping (20mins)
11) Unit is repackaged and shipped back to customer (10 mins)

As you can see, there is a large time variance. Apple (as with most if not all businesses)is not in the business of providing free dumb-ass service to it’s customers. This one issue was touched by many employees, each having their own cost structure to the bottom line. Apple probably would have spent more then $300 to have his laptop looked at, only for it be to returned as nothing wrong.

That’s not fair you say… I think if you were in the same position, even as a struggling auto repair specialist, that if someone comes in and takes up your time blabbing about some issues, not only do you spend time with them diagnosing their problem and listening to the nitwit talk like they know about the inner workings of an automobile, you then take a diagnostic measurement to confirm to them, no sir nothing wrong, while you could have been taking care of paying customers and thus earning money, you’d want to charge a minimum fee for taking up your time. This would especially be true if you were a damn good mechanic.. that your opinion means something. Putting a cost in place also ensures that you will most likely be getting their money is something is wrong, because they have money already invested in seeing if it needs to be fixed.

Economics lesson anyone?

If that response was indeed from Steve Jobs… great job Steve. I’m sick and tired of people complaining that they can’t take their electronics into the pool… that they can’t throw their $1500 investment from the rooftops and check email when it lands, that they can’t put it into the microwave with a bag of popcorn on top and play a dvd (with the attached drive of course!) afterwards.
Spot on assessment of looking for someone else to get mad at.

Are there any other companies that charge to just LOOK, not fix, a computer?

I know IBM doesn’t nor does Dell….

Funny how the fanboys are “oh it’s ok since it’s apple blah blah blah”

Apple = Massive Epic FAIL on this one

There is nothing I am not getting and there is no fanboi bias here. The facts are simple: electronic equipment and water do not go together. If you don’t get that and screw up your equipment it will cost money to have it accessed and repaired. If I drive my car into a lake while drunk I will have to get it towed out (which will cost me), I will have to FET a diagnostic check (which will cost me), and I will probably have to spend some time in court (which will cost me). Apple nor any other company should be held responsible in any way for a customer’s stupidity.

AND, if you’re not happy with Apple’s response, find a local computer shop to help you. Just quit whining because you spilled your Appletini on your laptop.

oh, and FET above is obviously a typo so please don’t flame me over that.

If apple were to come pick up the machine, I can see a cost for that, just like a tow truck

and to have a simple diag run, generally every mechanic I’ve been to is free or you can goto AutoZone & they’ll run a check for nothing

I’ve also had the dealer for my car do a free check if there is a problem….

I just can’t see how it’s ok for Apple to charge for everything when their competition does the same service for nothing, but I suppose that’s why Apple has less than 10% of the market share…

warranty does not cover some idiot dropping a cup of water on his laptop. warranty covers defects in workmanship.
when you take car to dealer, most times, if under their warranty, they’ll take a look for free. If not underwarranty, you pay through nose.
Also, free look from someone at autozone. yeah they hire real mechanics who can easily make $40-50 an hour to work a job making $10-15 an hour. I wouldn’t trust a $10hr person with my $20k car. Why don’t I just drop my baby off at target… since they sell baby stuff there I am sure everyone who works there knows how to take care of a baby right?

as far as dell and ibm and lenovo and hp and sony, when you are outside of your warranty you get charged. If you are in warranty but do something that is not covered, they will charge you. I’ve had to pay dell and sony money to fix issues with pc/lt that was out of warranty.

I agree with Steve. And not just because everything he says is always right, but because it actually makes sense. If you’re going to shell out the cash for a pro-machine, then you need to act like a pro and keep it away from the water. And yeah, the guy sounds like a pissed off ape w/no brain. If we wants it fixed for less than he can take it apart himself. He shouldn’t have spilled water on it.

The AutoZone employee doesn’t fix the problem, they diagnose it and then you go from there

My jeep isn’t under warranty but I have had the deal figure out what the problem was, I have also had it done with a Chevy I had, apparently the dealerships care about how their image is perceived, did they fix anything for free? No, but they didn’t charge me to look at the car.

BINGO!!!!!!!! “fix issues” not look at but FIX

Again this is NOT a warranty problem, the guy screwed up, he admitted he screwed up & was willing to pay for the repair if it can be done, but to be charged 300$ to be told if it was a lost cause or could be fixed, but a pay me 300$ to diagnose a problem & then MAYBE we’ll fix it but until you pay up we won’t look at it

JC you are exactly right but, this is steve jobs, and apple, and the lemmings who follow.
some of these posts that call the guy moron, idiot etc.reveal a lot more about the writer than they do about the problems of owning a maverick even if the maverick is fantastic.
the kind of policy that just throws a 300.00 diagnostic charge at the customer who is honest and doesn’t lie about the problem shows the gall of the company. but, the company is apple; and he is steve jobs ;and he has a cult like following as demonstrated by the other posts. without this cult apple wouldn’t be. as other cult leaders have found, there is no future. reasonable people may be tempted but usually go mainstream. maby the cult will bite the apple or have some kool aid but, this too shall pass.

I don’t know of a car dealer that does ANYTHING for free. Sure, they “diagnose” the problem and estimate what the costs of the repair will be. Translation: they listen to what you tell them and then guess how much it will cost and then they get to work. Once they are inside your engine they find ten more things wrong with it and call to tell you it’s going to be $1850 instead of the $340 they originally thought. You can then OK the extra work or get your non-repaired car back for the $340 originally quoted. Oh, and you should probably get you oil changed for $35.

Look, the laptop doesn’t need diagnosis. You know what happened to it. Pay the $300, get it fixed and be done with it. And if Apple can’t fix it, then buy a new one and don’t spill water on it. Most people will pretend to do a “FREE” diagnosis and then tell you your machine is dead and make you buy a new one.

If you don’t like the fact that Apple charges for service then go to a local shop.

Once again the apologists wait in line to kiss the hairy egotistic butts of the corporate elite. Steve Jobs is not your friend - frankly he doesn’t give a crap about you guys. Why do you defend him ? Let me give an example of how the world is dividing. Those that can charge three hundred dollars for nothing. You can spend a good 2 hrs waiting for a tech to help someone with an ipod while you wait to have your 2,700 dollar MBP. There are no priorities at Apple or any other company they don’t give a byte about your problems. OIl companies make 17,000,000,000 in profit and you suffer by buying less food. Oh well go ahead and make apologies for them also. You people are so gullible and - yes - they are not your friends.